Drake’s Music is Full of Ghosts.
Disclaimer for the Drake stans. This is an opinion. And I’m allowed to have one.
By Leah Drayton
The sky is full black, yawning with stars. It’s midnight and I’m dancing by myself in an outdoor nightclub in St.Vincent. My dress is sticking to my back and my feet are rolling over beer bottles on the floor. I walk on tiptoes so I don’t break one – I’ve seen girls fall over on them all night .
I’ve had three free glasses sloshing over with Ciroc and pineapple juice (and I’m starting my fourth). A guy slouching on a railing keeps pulling on my hand to dance. But, I’m American enough to ignore him and Caribbean enough to give him enough of an attitude to keep him away.
The natural rhythm of a Caribbean dance floor is a well-timed wobble of backsides, legs, and thighs in a carnal ripple of bodies. It’s choreographed from years of practice – practice I have been willfully neglected in since I haven’t been back to St.Vincent in years and I never go out to the club in New York.
I had come home to St.Vincent for a cousin’s wedding and had too much energy from being cooped up with my family for a week – begging my younger cousin to take me somewhere where the men aren’t related to me and I will never hear the word support bra. She took me to a club that served as a massive treehouse above a well- pocked road downtown. The party operated without the American politics of looking like a Kardashian, stuck to the wall and judging.
It was going all well until the deejay decided to come to a “Drake” moment.
Let me explain what happened when “Controlla” came on.
Those who were dancing before kind of just stood around and bopped their heads. I knew in America, the song would have been an instant hit for a slow whine, but the Caribbean crowd took this moment to cool off, get a good look at their dance partner (sometimes, a good LAST look), and get another drink. Those who continued dancing gave a choreographed performance- the kind that people appreciate to see but rarely can do themselves, so others stand around and stare. The dancers weren’t swept in the moment, rather just doing what they have done before when this happens. “Controlla” – heavily inspired by this culture, bored the people who inspired it.
The brief Beenie Man sample came on, the crowd seemed to slowly snap back into attention – so the deejay played the original Beenie track instead. It was a weird moment of Thanks for reminding us what we wanted to hear, Drake!
I’ve never really been a Drake fan, but I’ve enjoyed him being the heart of trendy mainstream hip-hop (and good Black Twitter memes). He’s a vehicle for the culture (and, decidingly, other people’s cultures) into the profitable mainstream. The rise and ebb of Jamaican Drake to Canadian Drake to Dominican Drake to Compton Drake is always interesting as the superstar samples different flavors of blackness and makes it a hit. However the issue is what Drake samples.
Drake’s music doesn’t just sample older music and beckon to past relationships – Drake’s music is riddled with ghosts. Ghosts of old emotions. Ghosts of past relationships. Ghosts of better songs.
The culture used as seasoning for Drake’s crooning – New Orleans bounce in “Nice for What”, Jamaican dancehall in “Controlla”, Nigerian Afrobeat in “One Dance”, Aaliyah’s mythos, Boys II Men, old Nicki performances – gives this sense of nostalgia for other things. But they aren’t other things that are not unattainable. If you want bounce or Aaliyah or Lauren Hill you don’t need Drake to remind you of that, you could just find that yourself. Drake’s samples are for those who don’t know what those things are. Young kids, less-than-cultured music fans, people without Genius.
It’s hard to hear an album like “Scorpion”, riddled with ghosts and black culture nostalgia without wanting to just go listen to the thing sampled in the first place.
He pays homage – which is beautiful at times, haunting at others. Magnolia Shorty provides the vocals for “In My Feelings” as teenagers enjoy the Keke challenge to the energy Shorty (Renetta Yemika Lowe-Bridgewater) brought before her murder in 2010. She was one of the first women signed onto Cash Money record – Drake loves a little history. Entire tributes to black women, living and dead, are sampled lovingly – but forcefully, like Drake is a wise grandmother reminding you that you need to remember those before you.
And it’s not just the samples. Sampling is supposed to take one piece of art and transfer it to a new context, but where Drake misses the point is that new context lingers in the past. You remember that Wizkid track you love ? Here’s it in a song that makes you think about your ex. You remember that Beenie Man song? Here’s it in a song about that girl you never really had. You know that Marvin Gaye song you love –
For the past month, Spotify has found it pertinent to remind me at every turn that Drake released “Scorpion”. Never have I ever by so harassed by a music platform to listen to something so different than my music history. Homeboy was on every curated playlist – Drake’s been smugly staring at me on the cover of Top Hits, Get Turney, New Releases, and nearly every hip hop Spotify collection. I follow a whopping total of four of his songs, yet I’m being suggested entire albums by Aubrey Graham.
The reason why (I believe) Drake is so cherished by the mainstream is because he is easy to be cherished. He’s the Sandman, collecting beloved dreams and memories and thoughts and giving them back to us. He carefully curates what we miss and delivers it with the smug sense that we don’t value him for it. Drake samples songs everyone loves, Drake samples feelings everyone feels, Drake takes notes about a past everyone’s experienced – Drake is the zeitgeist! He takes whole human beings who have left us too soon and reminds us that we didn’t cherish them enough when they were here.
But at a point it becomes too much. How many times are you going to miss your ex until you realize that the relationship wasn’t that good anyway? How many times can you listen to the same Lauryn Hill sample rehashed and regurgitated over the same emotions?
I’m not saying “Scorpion” is a disappointment or that Drake isn’t talented but it’s clear why we have that fleeting emotional moment that we do with is music. He’s reanimating things we already loved. We can love it and miss it and yearn for it to be new – but it just isn’t.
We left the club at 4 A.M, when the rain became too heavy for us to deal with. It was a nightmare to find the car in the darkness. Music still echoed from the club – people’s voices, glass breaking and the clap of the rain hitting the pavement mingled with the tracks. The deejay played an old reggae song I didn’t remember the name of but my father played when washing his car.
At the end of the night, just before sunset, the deejay plays the kind of music to remind everyone they have a home to go to.
